Defense analysts: Britain's military budget to be overtaken by India's by 2017

LONDON – Defense analysis firm IHS Jane's says that Britain's military budget is set to be outstripped by its former colonial subject, India, within the next few years.

Jane's said that projections being published Wednesday show that Britain — now No. 4 in terms of global military spending — is due to fall behind Russia this year before slipping into sixth place behind India in 2017.

Britain's Ministry of Defense disputes some of Jane's figures and describes its prediction as "baseless speculation."

But the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute says that given U.K. budget forecasts and India's projected economic growth it is reasonable to assume that the two nations' military budgets will be neck-and-neck by 2016.